[R] S v. 5

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, John Thaden wrote:

> Does R, or will R, be integrating the changes to the Chambers/Lucent S
> language under their version 5.0?  If not already, then when?

Wait a minute: S is only at version 4, and I doubt if there will be an S
version 5 (mutter omega quietly, or look at www.omegahat.org). One issue
here is what one is talking about, as Sv4 and S-PLUS 5.x (now 5.1) are none
too similar.

As far as I know a reasonable aim is to get to R1.0 early next year as `not
unlike the prototype' (Sv3 as exemplified in S-PLUS 3.4). After that, it
depends how enthusiastic people still are about R (as distinct from, say,
omega).

Do be aware how long Sv4/S-PLUS 5.x was in gestation and how much time was
spent on backwards compatibility and is still being spent on efficiency
and bug-fixes. My guess is that those changes took more effort than the
whole of current R. After using various versions for 18 months I still do
not fully grasp S-PLUS 5.x (and know not to believe the documentation).
[Funny, R does not have that problem ... so perhaps we should document aht
we have first.]

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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